


Broken Wings

by AllannaStone



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-06-23 07:30:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15601374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllannaStone/pseuds/AllannaStone
Summary: When the Avengers are dispatched to Ireland on a rescue mission, they only find one surviving victim- an abused girl with powerful gifts. Untrusting, mute and scarred, this young child somehow worms her way into everyone’s hearts. What happens when Fury decides to have her join the team?





	Broken Wings

**Author's Note:**

> So, I posted this ficlet on FanFiction.net many a years ago, and I'm rewriting it. Okay? Okay.

It was stormy when they found her.

         

They were told that it was a simple rescue mission; that there were HYDRA scientists doing cruel experiments on children. The mission was to get the children out and capture the scientists for questioning.

         

Natasha Romanoff, otherwise known as Black Widow, sat in her seat, drumming her fingers against the arm rest, her eyes darting around wildly as she tried to stop her whirling mind. Director Fury had shown the team pictures of children who were unburied from graves in the marshes of Ireland, and the sight of those poor children who would never grow up made the Russian assassin sick to her stomach.

         

“What kind of cruel, sick monster would do that?” she whispered softly, leaning her head back and closing her eyes, praying that the images would stop flashing in her mind, but knwong that they would be imprinted in her mind for a very long time.

         

“The world is full of cruel, sick monsters, Natasha,” answered Clint Barton in a monotone; the archer was also haunted by the disturbing images. Everyone knew that he was thing of his own kids and imagining them in the place of the experimented children.

         

Dr. Bruce Banner was in a corner, readying the medical bay for the survivors that they would (hopefully) rescue while Tony Stark polished his helmet for the umpteenth time. Steve Rogers looked tense and Bucky looked ready to straight up murder someone. Thor sat tight with a murderous gleam in his eyes, Sam Wilson was sketching something, the colored pencil in his fingers threatening to snap at her tight grip.

 

Finally, the autopilot up front blipped a few times, letting the Avengers know that they’ve reached their destination.

         

“We’re here,” announced Steve in a grim voice, pulling on his cowl and standing.

 

~xoXox~

 

          There were no survivors.

         

Everyone in the facility had either been shot execution style or committed suicide by poison.

         

“Good Gods,” whispered Thor, coming out of a holding cell, his eyes full of grief.

         

They all regrouped near the entrance, where they began to tally up bodies they’ve counted. Once they had an accurate number, Natasha frowned at the digits.

         

“There should be one more,” she muttered before hearing something scuttling from one of the walls led to a hallway.

         

“I hate giving Fury bad news,” muttered Hawkeye, stringing up his bow as he went to check out the pounding that had been heard, with Iron Man, Falcon, Bucky and Captain America following closely behind him.

         

“Find anything?” asked Iron Man when they’ve regrouped fifteen minutes later.

         

“No,” answered Thor before a sound made him spin around with his hammer in fight position. He misjudged how much space he had and accident knocked in a wall, revealing a hidden room.

         

“Oops,” the Norse god muttered before seeing something that made his heart literally stop in his chest.

         

It was a young girl, who was chained to the wall, not wearing a stitching of clothing, bloodied and bruised with scars criss crossing her body everywhere. She saw the Avengers and hissed in warning, fighting her bondage with the fire of someone who had never given up hope.

         

“It’s okay, we’re not going to hurt you….” soothed Natasha, being the first to snap out of her shock. She reholsterest her gun and approached the girl, who allowed her to unlock her chains before jumping up onto a ledge and hissing at the team, covering herself with her arms. “Leave,” Black Widow ordered the men, who did as she asked. “My name is Natasha, what’s yours?” The girl remained silent, her eyes watching the redhead assassin with suspicion. “I’m not going to hurt you…”

 

Twenty minutes later, the girl had finally allowed Natasha to get close enough to see her better in the poor light. The girl looked to be in her late teens with a malnutrition body that was so thin that the deadly assassin could count her rib cage and see her backbone, a sunken in face with mismatched purple and green eyes that betrayed her every emotion, and a mane of tangled black curls that looked like they had never been properly cared for.

 

“What’s your name?” asked Natasha again, this time as the girl shook her head and made a gesture towards her throat. The Russian saw a scar there and it made her blood boil, but she hid it the best she could.

 

The girl slowly backed off, her mismatched eyes holding fear as she jumped up back onto the ledge and hid there until Natasha calmed down. Still only then she stayed up on the ledge.

 

“I’m going to get you something to eat, OK?” Natasha suddenly had an idea, but she wasn’t sure that it would work.

 

“Bruce!” she shouted when she reached the jet. The man came out, dressed in sweatpants and carrying a medical bag. “I have an idea, but I’m not sure it will work…”

 

~xoXox~

 

Thor carried the unconscious girl towards the carrier, looking straight ahead as he willed himself not to look at the abused girl; he knew that if he did, he would see her painful scars and bruises and he would truly lose his infamous temper.

 

He boarded the hellicarrier and saw Dr. Banner had set up the medical bay and was drawing the sheets back on the bed for the beaten girl to be placed.

 

“Should I remove my cape?” he asked the doctor quietly, not wanting to wake her up.

 

“No- you have her cocooned enough so that she can’t get out and hurt herself,” he answered the Norse God before wheeling her off for an MRI and CAT scan.

 

Half an hour later, her was holding up the scans in shock and anger as he breathed deeply, forcing himself not to transform into his green skinned alter ego.

 

“What is it, Bruce?” asked Steve, coming up behind him with Sam and Natasha, who had been sitting next to the sedated girl.

 

“Look at this.” The doctor pointed to several broken bones. “These are three days old, but they’re already healing at an impossibly fast rate. And this.” He pointed to a picture of his pelvic bone. “See the tissue tearing here and here?” He pointed to a few places. “I’d say she was raped by two or more males.”

 

Steve turned white while Natasha fought back tears of fury. She glanced behind her and saw the girl was still sound asleep. Sam Wilson clenched his fists and forced himself to breath in through his nose several times at the news.

 

“Natasha,” spoke up Clint, coming out of the cockpit, where he had set the jet on autopilot. “I found these in her cell.”

 

The Russian spy took the three items and held them.

         

A ratty stuffed bear that was missing a button eyes and had clumsy patches decorating its once plush fur.

         

An abused book of fairy tales.

         

And a gold locket with an emerald in the center.

 

“Maybe she was kidnapped?” suggested Steve as Bruce got ready to perform a blood test.

 

“I won’t know anything until I run these tests,” muttered the doctor, breathing heavily through his nose before going into the lab to do the tests.

 

Meanwhile, Natasha had sat down next to the sleeping girl, giving her the bear to cuddle with and opening the book of fairy tales and beginning to read to her.

         

“An escape from reality,” she murmured softly, thinking back to her days as a little girl living in Russia before returning to the book.

 

~xoXox~

 

“Natasha.”

         

The redhead agent looked up as Steve caught up to her as she exited the plane. She looked up and saw that he was holding a thick file.

         

“I grabbed this before I left one of the labs- everything was burnt except for this,” he explained, holding it out for her to take and flip through.

         

“Oh God…” she whispered, looking through detailed notes of what experiments were done to the girl, who was in a medicine induced coma so that when they arrived at Avenger tower in fifteen minutes, she wouldn’t panic and create a mess that needed to be cleaned up. There were even pictures and a DVD disk, which she made a mental note to watch later.

         

Natasha refused to be parted from the girl, who was still wrapped in Thor’s cape. Dr. Banner barked orders to the other medics as he made his way towards the onsite hospital that Avenger tower had equipped the kind of medical emergencies that came with being superheroes. The Russian assassin stayed with the girl as Bruce had her go though several MRI and CAT scans, took X-rays and equipped her with IVs and diagnosed her with severe malnutrition and possibly PTSD.

         

“I won’t know anything for certain until she wakes up in thirty six hours,” he told Natasha, who had offered the use of the suites next to hers for the girl to recover in.

         

“That sounds like such a short time for her to be out,” commented the Russian redhead as Tony came into the hospital room with his assistant, Pepper Potts.

         

“This is her,” he told her, his face seemingly with more wrinkles than usual.

         

“She looks so young…” she muttered in shock, nearly dropping her clipboard as tears welled up in her eyes. She straightened up and turned to face Natasha. “I can only hope that she’ll recover.”

 

“Me too,” Natasha said, flipping through the files that Steve had recovered. “She doesn’t seem to have a name- she is always referred to as being ‘the most prominent experiment’.”

         

“How sick,” muttered Dr. Banner before beginning to chart her heart rate.


End file.
